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Upcoming Events

Session 4: Text To Be Picked

Date TBD

Text: To be decided by the group

Location: Member's Place

Film Screening: "The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class into Foreigners"

November 12, 2025 • 17:00–20:00

What: Documentary screening and discussion with director Samir

Location: PB Labs (RZ D8), ETH Zurich

Duration: 129 min | Italian, German, French with English subtitles

Description: What does the history of trade unions have to do with inclusion and hospitality in Switzerland today? How has the public imagination of workers changed alongside industrialization, social movements, and migration since the end of World War II? Join us for a film screening and discussion around these questions.

Organized by: WIDE Group, First Generation Network Zurich, and ETH Diversity

Register: Registration form

Trailer: www.working-class.ch

18th Right Livelihood Lecture with Audrey Tang

December 4, 2025 • 18:30–20:00

Location: Aula of the University of Zurich (KOL-G-201)

Description: Audrey Tang is a civic hacker and technologist who rewires systems for the public good. As Taiwan’s cyber ambassador and first digital minister, she showed how technology could deepen trust, giving millions a direct role in shaping policy. Having proven these systems in Taiwan, Tang now shares this playbook worldwide, using openness and co-creation to fight polarisation and renew democracy.

More information: Event details

Past Events

Public Conversation with Prof. Felwine Sarr — "Afrotopia"

October 22, 2025

Time: 18:00–19:30, followed by an apéro

Location: ETH Zurich (main building), Room E3, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zurich

Moderator: Marcy Goldberg

Language: English

About the Event:

How can we move beyond dominant narratives of development and reimagine Africa on its own terms? What knowledge counts, and who decides?

A public conversation with Prof. Felwine Sarr, one of Africa's leading contemporary thinkers, as he reflected on the ideas in his influential book Afrotopia and what has changed since its publication. Against the backdrop of global aid cuts, shifting power dynamics, and the urgent need to decolonize knowledge production, Sarr invited us to reimagine Africa's future through a new, self-determined lens.

About Prof. Felwine Sarr:

Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese economist, philosopher, and writer. He currently holds the Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professorship of Romance Studies at Duke University, after teaching at Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal. His work spans economics, epistemology, African philosophy, and cultural restitution.

Selected Publications:

  • Afrotopia (2016)
  • Restituer le patrimoine Africain (2018, with Bénédicte Savoy)
  • L'Économie à venir (2021, with Gaël Giraud)

Engagement of the Club Members:

Public lecture attended by a significant number of club members. The nature of the debate and particularly the way it was chaired was hotly debated in the wa group during the lecture. Members of the club convened in a nearby establishment to process the substance of the lecture. Some siding with the transformational unnuanced nature of the claims, some wanting more in terms of specific political alternatives.